I have spoken about meal prepping
before - our crazy cooking days, which have, in recent times, become an interstate adventure thanks to Tara living in Melbourne!
The original blog was pretty much what we did, with the intention of sharing some recipes at some stage... which I never got around to.
So after this weekend's cooking extravaganza (12 weeks worth of food anyone?), I thought it was time to document it properly! Because we made so much food, and so many recipes, this is going to have to be a series, not just one post :)
Let's start with the how.
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The week before...
We spent a bit of time selecting the recipes we were going to make (hello Pintrest! You can find our board
here). From there, we made a list of everything I already have, the tools we would need (and the kitchen things Tara should bring from Melbourne) and a shopping list, so I had a plan when I went to the shops.
Friday...
Tara drove to my house, from her house in Melbourne. This takes about 10 or 11 hours, and she arrived at around 2am on Saturday morning.
I went to the meat market before work, and bought all of the ingredients that we would need (well, all that I could buy at the meat market). I don't know if I mentioned the meat market last time, but it's in Pendle Hill in Western Sydney. And it will change your life. Such good quality and reasonably priced. Love it!
I also prepped my house and set it up to be more practical than usual, with more tables etc. The perils of having a rental house with the smallest kitchen known to man!
Saturday...
I went to dancing like usual, and whilst I was there, borrowed 2 additional slow cookers - taking our slow cooker count up to 4! This might seem like many, but I am fairly sure this is what made our lives so easy this weekend. When I returned, we did the Woolies shop for the remaining ingredients. I do actually prefer to shop independently, especially for fruits and veggies, deli meats and cheeses etc., but we didn't have time to shop around this time.
It was around midday that we eventually got going! The first thing was to get all 4 slow cookers on, so that we could leave them to do their thing. We literally follow the recipes that we have chosen - usually this entails prepping the meat and veggies as per the instructions, throwing everything in the slow cooker and turning it on.
Once they were happening, we got a spaghetti bolognese on the stove - we don't actually have a recipe for this anymore because we have made it so many times! I like to get this one on as soon as possible, because 8 hours of reducing a tomato sauce makes such a difference.
We also decided to make a pork bolognese this time as well, just to mix it up. This recipe is one I took from Hello Fresh, but instead of making it a quick meal, we popped it on the stove for about 2 hours - because yummy reduced tomato sauce :).
By this stage, it was 2.30pm in the afternoon and we had 6 recipes on the go. We got the house into some kind of order (putting groceries away and doing the dishes etc.), before regrouping and deciding what to do next.
Since we had run out of stove and slow cooker space, we prepped veggies to make some roast veggie bowls that Tara has tried and tested and loved. We both prepped veggies and lay them out on trays ready for roasting. For this we followed the 2 recipes that we had, and then made a custom option for Mack, with the veggies he likes! So now the oven was occupied too.
I then got onto to slicing up 8kg of chicken breast. Yes. 8 kilos! One thing we have done a few times now is marinate chicken breasts and freeze it raw - it is so great and so versatile to have in the freezer. I sliced up the chicken, whilst Tara made the marinades, and then we set about portioning them up into ziplock bags.
A few things here that we have learnt over the many times we have done this:
- set timers for each of your slow cookers!
- use ziplock bags (or vacuum bags) where possible to save space in the freezer
- clean as you go (even more important when your kitchen is as tiny as mine)
- make some kind of plan at the beginning of the day of what order you will make the recipes in
- have labels ready to go for the tupperware/bags - you think you will remember what everything is, but I promise you you won't always be able to tell what it is once it's frozen.
- MAKE SURE YOU ACTUALLY EAT FOOD!
this counts as organised recipes right?
when your kitchen is this tiny, it's so important to clean as you go!
Having the timers going was a new thing for us, and I can't believe we hadn't even thought to do it before. It meant that we knew when to check on something, when to add an additional ingredient, and when it should be done.
As the slow cookers recipes were finishing up, we had portioned up the chicken, and also the roasted veggies, and we were ready to let the finished slow cooker meals cool whilst we got new ones happening. This time, we just put one extra on in, leaving us with 2 left to do on Sunday. We also got one more recipe happening on the stove, and started off a soup that required cooling over night.
From there, all that was left to do was portion the meals that were finished, and tidy up, ready for tomorrow!
It really does help to meal prep with someone who you can get into a good flow with. Doing this on your own totally sucks, and if you have someone that's unsure what's going on, it will also take longer. After what is nearly 2 years of doing this, Tara and I have a great system going!
Sunday...
I woke pretty early, so I got one slow cooker meal in, and started prepping the other straight away. Even with actually sitting down and eating brekkie and coffee, we still had 2 slow cookers on and the soup finishing up by 11am!
pushing the friendship on the maximum volume of the slow cooker!
We then marinated some beef for a new quesadilla recipe we hadn't tried before (making up a couple of marinades just because we could), and decided we weren't going to make one of the recipes we had planned. Pizza pockets are super yummy, but they are a whole lot of work for not a lot of return.
We also set about making the beef casserole... until we realised that, aside from not having a casserole dish (and making a plan to borrow one from Mack's parents), I had totally blanked on this recipe entirely, and actually hadn't bought beef to make it with. Oops. No casserole for us!
The final job was to make pork schnitzels. Couldn't believe that Tara had never made schnitzels before! We prepped the meats, and crumbed them and vacpacked them individually.
It was a really weird feeling to approach 3pm, and have everything pretty much done. Everything had been prepped, most of them were finished and portioned, and we only had to finish tidying and washing up!
I did do one more meal after this moment - I took any leftover grains, veggies, spices and stock and threw it in the slow cooker. Mostly just to use it up haha, but it did create a nice veggie and lentil stew (and 3 extra days worth of food!).
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And that's it!
The biggest challenge for us was actually finding space to store all of this food overnight before Tara headed home on the Monday!!
In 1 weekend, we made...
16 different recipes.
78 days worth of food for 4 people.
That's 312 portions of food!
Money wise, we spent $665.72 (that's $332.86 per couple)... which works out to be $2.13 per portion! That's insane.
Obviously, you might need to add pasta, or rice, or perhaps a salad with some of these meals, but even so, the per meal per person cost would still be less than $4. The whole reason we started this was to stop wasting food and save more money. This certainly does that! It does mean outlaying a few hundred dollars at the beginning, but SO worth it.
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So how big is a portion?
This has been a huge trial and error process for us! Mack and I don't eat a whole lot, whereas Tim and Tara eat larger portions.
We have found as a general rule for all 4 of us that:
- if it is essentially a complete meal (e.g. a stew or similar where you aren't adding any additional pasta or rice, but perhaps might have crusty bread on the side), then 400g per couple is good (200g per person)
- if you are adding pasta, rice or additional item to the dish when you are ready to eat, then 300g works (150g per person)
And yes we really do get the scales out and weigh everything. We weigh each portion out, and get an even number of portions (so it is divided equally between both couples), and then any leftovers we split between each container. So sometimes the portions might be a smidge bigger, but yea.
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So where do we store all of this food?
Both Tara and I have a chest freezer! This cook certainly filled it up from almost empty though.
We didn't start this way though - when we started this 2 years ago, we used Chinese takeaway containers for the portions, and it fit in my normal freezer (at first). For anyone doing this for the first time, I would use the cheap containers, and cook 14 or so days worth of food, and see if it works for you. I got a chest freezer after the time we cooked and I had to take the ice trays and the shelves out of the freezer to fit everything in :).
Once you get into a rhythm, then start investing in good Tupperware. I get mine from Kmart and they are the best! They are 600ml and are perfect for 1 meal for 2 people. Tara has 1 litre Sistema containers - I don't think they seal as well, but the larger size means that I could fit 2 meals for 2 people, which saves a whole lot of space when you cook as much as we did!
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So what did we make?
Each week on Wednesday at 5pm, I will post the recipes that we made for this cooking weekend. I do try to do step by step photos when I post recipes, but with this much food it is almost impossible, so I will post all of the photos we do have ! Once they are up, I will link them here as well :)
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Slow cooker pulled pork
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Slow cooker minestrone soup
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Slow cooker beef and barley Stew
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Slow cooker Tuscan chicken
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Spaghetti bolognese
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Pork and fennel bolognese
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Roast veggie bowls
- Marinated chicken breast (
my top 10 faves!)
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Slow cooker apple rice pudding
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Chicken soup
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Italian sausage tortellini stew
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Slow cooker lamb Rogan Josh
- Slow cooker curried lentil and chickpea stew
- Make your own pork schnitzel - this one is coming soon; I want some step by step pics first!
- Beef quesadilla - also coming soon; I want to refine these marinades before I share!
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I hope this helps you get started on your own meal prep routine!
If you do have questions, pop them below :)
Hx
